Visual shred: Arsis - Shattering the Spell

10:54 AM Unknown 0 Comments

The opening riff has been haunting me ever since the album got released in 2008. I released a tab for this song as well on Ultimate Guitar - check it out if you have the guts (and Guitar Pro 5).

 To be honest, with exception of their debut album, this record is their best to date IMO. Although heavily criticized for the choice of their drummer, Darren Cesca provides some intricate and original content on battery which really adds special flavour to the technical and old school, "Necrophagist in the 80s", touch. The sound of James' and Ryan's guitars just add it all up - clear, crisp riffs with the Ibanez'ish maple-implied neck pickup sound whilst solos

 Enjoy! First video cover post, last cover video on my Youtube channel. Leave some comments or subscribe if you liked it! Thanks.

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Fender Telecaster Mexico '14 Lefty - Shielding & DiMarzio Tone Zone T SC humbucker

5:17 PM Unknown 0 Comments


 First project on this blog and kinda excited to dive into it. My band's drummer recently purchased a Fender Telecaster and wasn't quite satisfied with the buzz from the pickups and the thin sound in general. In suspicion of electromagnetic distress I therefore recommended to shield the guitar and put a SC bridge humbucker into it. Without further hesitation my buddy instantly handed the guitar over to me. As this is my first 'real' blog entry, please don't mind wrong image scaling, poor display of English language and logic fallacies.

Problem statement:
  • - Telecaster exhibits enormous acoustic impact by electromagnetic/electrostatic radiation.
  • - Bridge pickup sounds thin
  • - Thicker strings are preferred
  • - General setup of guitar

 Problem description:
  • - For exemplary description of the difference between electromagnetic and electrostatic consult your local library or hey, there's this globally linked thing called the Interwebz.
    However, there's a good description on differencebetween. Typical emitters of electrostatic radiation are e.g. computer screens or cheap neon tubes.

    Unfortunately, some guitar manufacturers don't find it necessary to properly shield their guitars from outside radiation. As you can see below, only black conductive paint has been used to insulate the Tele. To get the delicate sound of single coils without receiving local radio stations' signals like in Spinal Tap (ok, in the movies it was the wireless guitar system) proper insulation is the way to go.

    This can either be reached by eliminating disruptive factors, twisted pair wiring, using hum-cancelling through humbuckers or shielding the guitars. To achieve an overall and sustainable effect on the guitar, I decided to shield the entire bowels of the guitar with copper tape.

  • - As my buddy mainly uses the bridge pickup and wants it to sound "fat", a humbucker seems to be the weapon of choice (I have heard single coils being used on death metal albums already - with proper tweaking - but in this case a fail-safe option seems to be sensible)

  • - Thicker strings - can do. D standard tuning and EB2215 should provide a firm grip on the low end and flexibility on the treble strings

Equipment used:
  • - DiMarzio Tone Zone T WH DP389 - 79€ at www.hieber-lindberg.de
  • - Copper Tape (18mm, 4 meters) from ebay - there are shielding kits, I decided to go full DIY
  • - Spare wires
  • - Ernie Ball EB2215 .052 - .010

  • - Phillips screw drivers 4 mm, 6 mm
  • - Flat screw driver 2 mm
  • - Allen keys 1,5 mm, 1/8"
  • - Pliers
  • - Soldering iron
  • - Multimeter
  • - PRS Guitar cleaner
  • - Micro fiber cloth
  • - Ballistol

Step 1: Unstringing the guitar and putting parts to be incorporated on it, hoping for parts to mix up and problems resolve themselves

Step 2: Disembowelment.
A useful tip is to always document the wiring when disconnecting parts for later stress relief. In times of smartphones no real obstacle. I disconnected the bridge pickup and witnessed some interesting grounding technique: connecting pickups' grounding with the conductive paint. After a short break of sardonic laughter I continued.

Step 3: Insulating the guitar cavities and covers with copper tape.
Note: there are shielding kits for Telecasters out there. I decided to try it with copper tape and actually was astonished with how seamlessly it could be integrated. Note the excess tape overlapping the edges of the cavities for continuity between copper-shielded cavities and pickguards/covers. This however is not possible along the long edges of the control cavity as the control plate barely covers it.
Recommendation at this point: applying pressure with your finger to apply the copper tape can be a nuisance in corners, therefore the rubber end of a pencil with a cloth wrapped around it worked fine for me.

Step 4: Connecting the new pickup with the rest of electronics and existing ground with the copper shields.

The copper surfaces act as a functional ground or antenna for electrostatic radiation. The more connected surface there is, the better! A lot of blogs point out the importance of continuity with shielding work and necessary soldering work if copper tape is used. Surprisingly, the copper tape I used does not entail the continuity-cancelling phenomenon of the adhesive film described and thus no additional work was necessary, can't argue with that.
Note the importance of serial and singular connections to avoid circular continuity cancelling (Source: Wikipedia):
  • - pickguard > neck pickup cavity > pote's case
  • - bridge plate > bridge pickup cavity > pote's case
  • - neck/bridge pickup > pote's case
  • - output jack > pote's case
  • - control cavity > pote's case
  • - pote's cases connecting each other
In the end with help of the multimeter, continuity should be evident between each cavity, potes and cover plates.

Step 5: Restringing the guitar and tuning, intonation, neck and action adjustment
In this step I gently applied a small amount of Ballistol to each point where the strings permanently touch the guitar's hardware. My experience has shown that this contributes significantly to the strings breaking due to fatigue at certain spots. Furthermore all hardware is checked for loose screws, standard procedure before tuning and intonation of the guitar.

Another thing, often left out of guitarists' consideration when changing strings, is to stretch them before usage. This is the most common mistake any player can make. Imagine lifting 50kg of iron in the gym without previous exercice. It works for a short period of time, but most certainly this won't work longer than a few times. ESPECIALLY with guitars with floating systems, the application of stress to the strings before doing divebombs or any sort of string whackery is crucial for the longevity and tuning stability of the guitar and mental sanity of the guitar player.
Steel is capable of stretching a LOT, thus my rule of thumb is taking every string with both palms and stretching them with the thumbs (imagine a second hand in the picture below - can't yet afford a hands-free GoPro helmet cam) all the way from the first fret to the bridge. I continue this on every string (caution with the D-string and the high E), retune and stretch again, until the string does perfectly return to the original pitch.

For intonation purposes I have just recently discovered the joy of a strobe tuner. The one I use is available for free at http://www.tbstrobetuner.com/. Go give it a try if you have an interface, otherwise the tuner of your choice may be fine.

Step 6: Cleaning the guitar from all the blood, sweat and tears (of joy).
As this guitar is practically in mint condition, I could save some time and didn't have to polish frets and/or the fretboard. Some PRS guitar cleaner and a micro fiber cloth sufficed in this case. Behold, the finished Tele below.

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First post - welcome to c9gw

9:52 AM Unknown 0 Comments

First post on this blog? This is where all the weird philosophy, motivation and vision stuff goes. Perfect opportunity to delve into the depths of guitar nerdism. As for myself, I'm guitar player in Austrian Black Metal band Asphagor and Death Metal band Azum. Also, I publish a guitar cover video every now and then - check out my Youtube channel. Fav. genres of music? All sorts of metal, classical music, jazz, not really not listening to anything unless it's an exertion of repetition as substitute for compository content.

 Motivation of fixing guitars? Rob Scallon perfectly describes the steps to any modification on the guitar for the lazy guitar player: https://goo.gl/mvlWsw 
Futile nuisance to others and Sisyphean endeavor to some, these challenges rather pose an opportunity of meditative sorts for myself - yeah, I'm weird haha. In my opinion, the underlying concept of being able to fix guitars is strongly influenced whether or not one has screwed up lot of guitars and tried to repair them afterwards. As in my case, I became the epitome of inertia and put laziness to a new level. I did not look after my gear until it was in hell of a condition. Even then I didn't know how to properly set up my instruments - surprising, not? This practice continued until I got my first real guitar - an Ibanez Prestige RG3250 - which was more expensive than all previous guitars combined.

 Long story short, behold the great ventures of guitar fixing on this blog, spiced up with occasional bits of music.

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